ATHABASCA/WESTLOCK - A new group involving the towns and counties of Athabasca and Westlock, along with other stakeholders has been formed to brainstorm ideas and create partnerships, in an effort to promote year-round tourism in the region.
The Landing Valley Region Partnership held its inaugural meeting Oct. 21 over Zoom to introduce the partners, which included Vivian Zitlaw, the economic development officer for the Town of Westlock; Wendy Batog, the president of the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Club; James Leppan from Travel Alberta; Karen Seal, president of the Athabasca Pottery Club and Athabasca Advocate general manager; Jessica Toews with Westlock County, Frank Ponto and Howard Peterson from the Tourism and Economic Development (TED) committee in Athabasca County; TED economic development officer Luke Pantin; Sue Heuman from Focus Communications; Ida Edwards, councillor for the Town of Athabasca; and Lynn Olson, the communications director for the Athabasca River Runner Snowmobile Association.
“I'm really proud of the community and love it dearly. I’m excited for this regional group and a lot of my background includes community volunteerism and event coordination,” said Edwards.
Leppan explained to the group that his role is to work on driving tourism economies in regions north of Highway 16 and work with groups in communities to develop what they have to offer.
“I work with those operators and other enablers in the communities to try and refine those offerings, get them to market readiness, or export readiness, so that they are something that somebody can book in order to spend time in a region,” Leppan said.
The goal is to keep tourists in the region longer and provide them with more activities and more opportunities to explore.
“To get communities in similar regions to work together on programs and offerings for visitors is key to driving visitation to your region; keeping visitors in your regions,” he said. “Really a lot of it boils down to who's visiting your communities already. Why are they there? What are the programs, or what are the activities that they're really enjoying?”
The group will now build strategies for partnering and packaging tourism that encourages visitors to take part in activities in both the main communities and the smaller areas along Highway 2 and Highway 18, blurring the line between Athabasca and Westlock.
"When it comes to a regional collaboration, I'm always very excited to see people in the room working together simply because a visitor, when they walk over that imaginary line — ‘Oh, this is the boundary for the county of Westlock and now this is another community’ — the visitor doesn't know that,” Leppan said.
He added that he will offer some best practices other regions have used as well as context for creating great travel based on what the partner communities of Athabasca and Westlock have to offer.
“Of course, you and your local regions will have that grass roots, on-the-ground understanding about what your communities have to offer,” Leppan said. “And then we come together to discuss how we can provide opportunities for adventure exploration experiences for visitors coming through your regions.”
Once the partners have been identified the next step is packaging the experiences to create opportunities for travelers and make it easy for them to plan their trips.
“(The idea is to) make it easier for them to say, ‘Oh, well, I'm going to be there anyway; I can do all these things,'” said Leppan. “And sometimes it's quite a formal process where, let's say they're looking at a website, and they click on something to do and suddenly other options come up for other things they can do in the same region, it can be a very sort of functional approach.”
It is important for the communities to take part and be ambassadors to the region, he added.
"Sometimes it can also be more about community education and engagement where the community themselves and some of those local ambassadors are sharing that information,” he said.
Batog informed the group that the ski hill recently hosted athletes who did exactly what the group is trying to set up in a more convenient and packaged way.
“We've had air bagging sessions in Tawatinaw and had athletes come from Kelowna, Vancouver, everywhere and they're all telling us that they're going to come back in the winter,” she said. “And they all stayed at the Ramada Inn in Westlock and some went as far as going to Athabasca to the (Athabasca Regional Multiplex) because they heard how great it was.”
As the group moves forward, they will be reaching out to businesses and other stakeholders to get more input in building destination packages.
“There's a lot of people who think that tourism has a lot to offer the community, but there's a lot of operators that are either too busy to attend, or too busy to be involved in some way" Leppan said. “So, our role here is to help facilitate that and help get those people into the room.”
Heather Stocking, TownandCountryToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @HLSox
